Shore Leave
by I.C. Weener
Summary: The Sailor Senshis really went overboard this time.


" _Hey. Catch."_

\- Waterblight Ganon

* * *

Princess Serenity's internal organs displayed their finer diplomatic qualities by quickly making room for a one-foot-wide sharpened icicle. The princess stumbled backwards clutching the giant shard impaling her torso. Her eyes stared up at the towering Queen Metalia in terror and bewilderment, before she lost her strength and collapsed on her sparkling crystal platform. Her life was gone before she even hit the ground.

Metalia threw her hand down on top of the icy platform, squashing the motionless little moon bug under her palm into a splatter of red paste. And just like that, the millennia-old feud between the two space kingdoms was put to an end.

The force of the impact caused the princess's moon scepter—barely more than a speck of gold from Metalia's view—to twirl up into the air and fall back down to Earth. The giant queen swiftly caught it in her palm and brought it to her eyes to inspect it. She pried the Silver Crystal out of its crescent gold frame with the tips of her spiky black nails and held it over her head. The empty scepter was crushed in her fist and tossed away as rubbish. For the Silver Crystal, she dropped it onto the red velvet throne formed by her tongue and swallowed it, consuming all of Earth's hopes and dreams into her virile green flesh. The writhing purple petals that formed the base of her monstrous body twinkled with silver veins. A soft chuckle escaped her smirking lips.

The queen gazed into the hazy arctic distance. A mile away on the icecapped horizon, she could see four crystal mounds similar to Princess Serenity's, but jagged at the top and each holding up a dark limp figure dressed in blue, red, green, or orange. The Sailor Soldiers of this generation had fallen in the final battle, leaving their remains tangled in ice and plant roots. They were still fresh enough that the warmth hadn't completely left their bodies, and now that the princess they had been devoted to was no more, they all fell under the Queen Metalia's ownership. She would just resurrect them the same way Queen Serenity had at the end of the Silver Millennium. In her own vision.

Metalia corrupted the Silver Crystal's energy deep in her body and pointed ominously toward the four jagged ice formations. An expanding dome of darkness spread over the queen's quivering flower form and the lifeless distant spires. At the spot where each Sailor Soldier nobly rested in peace, the ice shards chimed the sound of low giggling.

Small phantom snow gremlins emerged out of the ice near the Sailor Soldiers' fallen forms and slowly spread over them. Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus were each mummified in a dense layer of glowing magic snow that almost completely hid their figures. Metalia wanted to make the annihilation of their mortal forms right this time. There would be no tormented screaming, no vaporizing green lights with skirts tastelessly fluttering up to their waists.

The vaguely hourglass lump of snow that used to be Rei moved gently. The Sailor Soldiers pulled themselves out of the snow drifts and shook the frozen platinum powder out of their hair. The costumes on their reanimated bodies were woven with glittering crystal scarves and skirts, and decorated with ribbons made of twisted and gnarled plant roots. The roots were tightly wound over their bodies underneath the sparkling Sailor Suits (hidden away for modesty) with the ends coming out of their scarves and reaching all the way up to their faces like dark green veins. Their eyes were four pairs of glowing demonic opals.

The Sailor Soldiers vanished into swirling snowflakes and instantly reappeared at their queen's feet. Metalia looked down at her loyal subjects with a twisted motherly smile.

"Now, girls, I think this greed-filled planet has clung to its energy for long enough. I'm leaving it up to you four to bring about its ruin."

The Sailor Soldiers responded together with demented laughter.


End file.
